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Chris Hayden
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, February 01, 2003 - 11:52 am: | 
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I know it has been posted about before on this site (possibly in connection with the excerpt that appeared in DARK MATTER) but I just got through with BLACK NO MORE by George S. Schuyler. The book itself is probably not a hot topic (it was published in 1931) but the subject matter is timely today. I thought it was hilarious, and I could see where Ishmael Reed got his inspiration for MUMBO JUMBO and some other work (he is a Schuyler admirer and wrote the introduction to the edition I read) |
reppskearn
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, February 01, 2003 - 02:12 pm: |
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Hey Chris,
I think Black No More is one of the most hilarious novels that I have ever read. I stumbled upon it about twelve years ago while doing some research on Harlem Renaissance writers. Another great book is Imperium in Imperio by Sutton Griggs; it was written in 1903. If you can get your hands on a copy of it, read it. I have one copy and have been trying to find another for about ten years. It is so good that my copy will never leave my home. REK |
Cynique
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, February 01, 2003 - 02:57 pm: |
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Didn't I read somewhere that the movie "Watermelon Man" was the based loosely on this book? |
Thumper
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, February 02, 2003 - 01:00 pm: |
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Hello All,
Black No More was a hot topic on the discussion board a few years ago when it was re-published by Random House. I LOVED IT!!! I thought it was hilarious!! |
Chris Hayden
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, February 05, 2003 - 02:56 pm: |
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Only one thing about the book that troubled me, though--it seemed to infer that the only solution to the race problem was for black people to disappear--ie turn white--and then turned around and inferred that even THAT might not be a solution. |
Thumper
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, February 16, 2003 - 04:44 pm: |
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Hello Chris,
In my opinion, the point Schuyler is making is that no matter the color, somebody is going to want to feel that they're better than the next person. So when the time came and there was no more black people, then it was time to be prejudice against white skin. Schuyler was showing the absurdity of racism.
I believe William Melvin Kelley illustrated that same point with A Different Drummer. As an answer to that famous white question, "why don't yawl go on back to Africa?" Or using AA as the scapegoat for every domestic problem in the country, he wrote a fantasy where in one southern state, all of the black people left. The book was a big "Now what? Ain't no more black folks, now what's the problem?"
I think both mean tried to point to the solution and called themselves doing it in such a way that might persaude an intelligent person. The only thing is the people that we're dealing with I question their "intelligence". What did Miki Howard say, "It's like leading a blind horse through a pasture, he can smell the grass, but he just don't know his way to it." |
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